Action over yellow homes signs

PUBLISHED: 10:42 14 August 2008 | UPDATED: 07:04 30 May 2010

One of the yellow signs

YELLOW signs indicating housing developments are finally becoming a thing of the past, after 10 years of complaints. Relentless campaigning to Essex County Council has galvanised officers into action to remove the many signs from Dunmow s streets. Complai

YELLOW signs indicating housing developments are finally becoming a thing of the past, after 10 years of complaints.

Relentless campaigning to Essex County Council has galvanised officers into action to remove the many signs from Dunmow's streets.

Complaints first started a decade ago, to the day, when Dunmow's Town Council clashed with Wickfords developments over signs pointing the way to the, as then, new Woodlands Park site on the edge of town.

Town councillors described the use of 16 signs as "excessive" as they were put up on the A120, A130, B184, The Causeway, Rosemary Lane and Ongar Road.

But the proposals were agreed by Uttlesford District Council after Wickford's consultant Cliff Neale defended the signs.

"They are standard AA new house signs," he said. "They will reduce traffic by cutting down the amount of people who could get lost en route to the site."

Since those early exchanges many more housing developments have sprung up across the district and so the many ways to battle them has increased.

Most recently a member of public, who didn't wish to be named, told the Broadcast that he would go around town and cover each sign with a message to keep Dunmow tidy.

He said: "Instead of these hideous yellow placards everywhere, we can use them to promote something that can really make a difference to Dunmow."

Not long after speaking to us a sign reading 'Keep Dunmow tidy. Have you picked up your five-a-day?' appeared on a Woodlands Park sign on Stortford Road, near to High Meadow.

It appears that Essex County Council has listened to the complaints and highways spokesman Chris Stoneham told the Dunmow traffic management group that, where they could, they were now starting to order them to be taken down. He said: "There are fewer now and we will be keeping a close eye on it from now on."

Chairman of the Dunmow Society, Mike Foster, who has also been fighting for the removal of the signs, thanked Mr Stoneham at the meeting and said that he hoped it would be a thing of the past.